Name: Apple Sauce for Roast Pork
Ingredients: 8 apples, wiped, pared, cored, and quartered; 1 cup sweet cider; ½ cup maple syrup; 2 slices of lemon; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon butter; a few grains of nutmeg

Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Apple Sauce for Roast Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Cook the apples with sweet cider, maple syrup, lemon slices, salt, butter, and nutmeg until soft.
Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Make the apple cups and serve

Make apple cups by slicing the stem end off bright red apples and scooping out the pulp.
Fill the apple cups with the apple sauce, adjust the covers, and serve with roast pork.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,238 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Apple + maple syruptop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together272 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,790 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide the bulk of the sauce, breaking down into soft pulp as they cook.
Maple syrup: Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the apples.
Sweet cider: Supplies liquid so the apples can cook down into a sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, cider, maple syrup, butter, nutmeg):

Figfits better
Pearfits better
Peachfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cider, maple syrup, butter, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.